“The Neocons Are Dying to Nuke Iran”

An interview with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
By Kathy Sanborn

Sanborn: When I read your article, “Marching Off Into Tyranny,” I was impressed by how you were able to concisely sum up one of the most important issues that we face as Americans, namely, the erosion of our civil liberties, mostly due to fabricated terrorism such as the anthrax scare and the attacks on 9/11. You talk about the Florida university professor, Al-Arian, who continues to be victimized by the Feds although a jury has cleared him of any terrorism charges. [As of August 8, 2008, the Associated Press states, “U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema postponed the trial indefinitely, questioning whether the government was overeager in filing charges.” –KS]What was your wake-up call, Dr. Roberts, to the fact that the current administration was determined to take away the civil liberties of Americans?Roberts: When they responded to 9/11 with the Patriot Act. That document was thick, and it would have taken months and months to prepare it, yet it came out shortly after the 9/11 attacks.Why does combating terrorism require an assault on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? It was clear to me that there was an undeclared agenda there.On the day of 9/11, I knew right away that something was wrong. I had been an engineering student at Georgia Tech, and things just didn’t add up. As I watched the towers fall, I could see that the buildings were blowing up from the top, at least initially. The airplanes caused asymmetrical damage, and I don’t think the planes were large enough to cause the buildings to topple. When you chop a tree down, it doesn’t blow up, it falls.The buildings were blowing up, not falling down.Then when I saw pictures of the alleged terrorists, most of them looked just like kids. They were small, and airplane passengers wouldn’t have hesitated to try to take them down. The average American male should have been able to take care of the hijackers. And how they could have fooled all of the intelligence agencies, outwit NORAD, and so on; it just didn’t make any sense. They were really after our civil liberties. That was their undeclared agenda. The effect is that no one has any protection under the law.

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